What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses? • Hacker News Board

Re: What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses?

#51

Post by RickJWagner » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 8:09 PM UTC

Density wrote: post #18

CDC can't study gun violence because they are out to ban guns. Quote from the CDC head Mark Rosenberg from 1994: “We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like we did with cigarettes. Now it [sic] is dirty, deadly and banned.” This isn't an okay attitude for a government employee to have because the bill of rights guarantees all Americans the right to bear arms.

I find it interesting that nobody seems interested in studying the characteristics of people who have trouble with guns versus those who don't.

I was born and raised in a midwest state that relies largely on tourism. The pheasant hunting season in particular is a big deal. My family, friends, and just about everybody I knew owned guns. In that context, I knew absolutely nobody who ever used a gun to hurt a human being. And I knew all these people for several decades.

Blaming the guns is just wrong. There are other factors at play here. We need to leave the framework (2nd amendment) alone and start working the root cause issues.

Re: What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses?

#52

Post by archagon » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 8:14 PM UTC

benjohnson wrote: post #43

xt00 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many countries that have essentially completely banned guns somehow have also managed to have low injury / death rates. Yes crimes still occur but are much less lethal with knives or other weapons compared to guns. So saying guns cause less injury vs preventing it sounds like it could be true but also is a symptom of our current culture in the US that has zillions of guns.

>>Many countries that have essentially completely banned guns somehow have also managed to have low injury / death rates. As long as you go back only a few years - many of those same countries have experienced genocides and holocausts from their powerful governments acting against a disarmed citizenry and driving their long-term violent death rates to astronomical levels. I would say that this observation is relevant…

At this moment in history, I am way more concerned about the thread of far-right violence than of a derelict government that needs to be put down. What if the people hoarding the guns end up allying with an authoritarian regime instead of rising up against it?

Re: What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses?

#53

Post by glenra » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 8:34 PM UTC

markisus wrote: post #39

I wonder what the author means when he says the CDC did not report their results? In the final paragraph he says, "Regardless of how the decision was made, it was a disservice to the American people, who paid for the survey and the information it yielded, but who were not allowed to see it and judge its worth for themselves." Indeed, it's wrong for government agencies to suppress publicly funded data sets, especially…

By "reporting their results" he means "publish a report which contains their estimate of the number of DGUs in the US". And preferably do so in a timely manner, like in the 1990s or 2000s. That never happened. They did eventually make this older raw survey data available - that was the source of this paper - but that's not nearly the same thing as saying "here is the official CDC estimate for how many DGUs there are annually in the US...which just happens to closely match Kleck's estimates" back when people were arguing about it.

Re: What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses?

#54

Post by bmpafa » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 9:26 PM UTC

glenra wrote: post #46

opportune wrote: post #8

I would like to know the contexts behind these defensive gun usages before I come to a conclusion. It could be that a significant portion are "empty" uses (e.g. brandishing a gun when scared by a weird noise at night when nobody was there), not actually defensive / used in a situation where the gun greatly escalated the situation (e.g. someone cuts you off in traffic and you "defend" your space), etc. - even though t…

The CDC study being discussed in this paper didn't followup but according to OP Kleck's other studies did - in Kleck's studies when people said they had a DGU they were asked to elaborate on the circumstances so this could be evaluated. By his analysis about 9% of reported DGUs didn't qualify as defensive, so he applied that as a modifier when comparing the new results to his. On the flip side there also exist reason…

> reasons to think the CDC undercounts DGUs, most notably that they only asked people who had a gun in the home if they had used a gun in self-defense.

Can you point me to something to back-up this claim? My gun-enthusiast friends often accuse the NCVS of under-counting, usually having to do with survey methodology flaws. But I've looked at the survey[1], and I can't find anything so substantiate their (or your) claim.

But, even still, the CDC numbers are _orders of magnitude_ lower than Kleck et al.--like 10x lower (afaik-not an expert here). So it's a tough pill to swallow that minor (or even substantial) survey errors would lead to that sort of discrepency.

https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ncvs104.pdf

Re: What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses?

#55

Post by acdha » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 11:03 PM UTC

benjohnson wrote: post #43

xt00 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many countries that have essentially completely banned guns somehow have also managed to have low injury / death rates. Yes crimes still occur but are much less lethal with knives or other weapons compared to guns. So saying guns cause less injury vs preventing it sounds like it could be true but also is a symptom of our current culture in the US that has zillions of guns.

>>Many countries that have essentially completely banned guns somehow have also managed to have low injury / death rates. As long as you go back only a few years - many of those same countries have experienced genocides and holocausts from their powerful governments acting against a disarmed citizenry and driving their long-term violent death rates to astronomical levels. I would say that this observation is relevant…

> many of those same countries have experienced genocides and holocausts from their powerful governments acting against a disarmed citizenry

More from the fact that a few armed citizens aren’t a match for an industrial state’s military. The Jews in the Warsaw uprising had guns, grenades, etc. but nowhere near enough people to defend against an army.

If you want to avoid atrocities, strong civil institutions matter a lot more than fantasies about LARPing Somalia.

Re: What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses?

#56

Post by reitanqild » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 11:50 PM UTC

archagon wrote: post #52

benjohnson wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Many countries that have essentially completely banned guns somehow have also managed to have low injury / death rates. As long as you go back only a few years - many of those same countries have experienced genocides and holocausts from their powerful governments acting against a disarmed citizenry and driving their long-term violent death rates to astronomical levels. I would say that this observation is relevant…

At this moment in history, I am way more concerned about the thread of far-right violence than of a derelict government that needs to be put down. What if the people hoarding the guns end up allying with an authoritarian regime instead of rising up against it?

In that case the authoritarian regime already has all the guns it needs and the threat is not significantly bigger than before.

Re: What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses?

#57

Post by reitanqild » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 11:55 PM UTC

acdha wrote: post #55

benjohnson wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Many countries that have essentially completely banned guns somehow have also managed to have low injury / death rates. As long as you go back only a few years - many of those same countries have experienced genocides and holocausts from their powerful governments acting against a disarmed citizenry and driving their long-term violent death rates to astronomical levels. I would say that this observation is relevant…

> many of those same countries have experienced genocides and holocausts from their powerful governments acting against a disarmed citizenry More from the fact that a few armed citizens aren’t a match for an industrial state’s military. The Jews in the Warsaw uprising had guns, grenades, etc. but nowhere near enough people to defend against an army. If you want to avoid atrocities, strong civil institutions matter a…

> The Jews in the Warsaw uprising had guns, grenades, etc. but nowhere near enough people to defend against an army.

Well, they delayed the Germans. That is impressive. Another time when the international community isn't too busy looking the other way it might buy enough time to save some people.

> If you want to avoid atrocities, strong civil institutions matter a lot more

Don't disagree. But there is no conflict between driving carefully and also wearing a seat belt.